Brad Pitt has been on the news recently getting publicity for his Make it Right project in the devastated lower 9th ward in New Orlean. Pitt has assembled an all star team of green designers, architects, and builders for this project. The website, www.makeitrightnola.org, contains plenty of video and flash animation and a method for you to donate cash to “adopt” a house. A cool feature is that it even allows you to designate that you want your donation to go towards the purchase of green items such as rooftop solar panels, solar thermal, CFLs, and environmentally safe paint.

As of this post, 9 of 150 homes have been adopted ($150,000 per home). This is a great initiative so please, check out the site and donate today!

MIAMI – Americans gave President Barack Obama a second term in office, but it still wasn’t clear early on Wednesday whether the president won the key battleground state of Florida.

The vote in the state, which introduced the terms “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots” to the masses in its historic 2000 presidential election, was too close to call long after Republican challenger Mitt Romney conceded his loss.

Early Wednesday morning Obama was edging out Romney by about 45,000 votes, or 0.53 percentage points, out of a total of 8.27 million votes cast in Florida, with about 99 percent of the votes counted.

“It’s 1:42 in the morning and I just heard there are still people voting in Miami-Dade County,” tweeted Chris Cate, spokesman for Florida’s Secretary of State, who is responsible for elections. “Kudos to their commitment to voting!”

The head of elections for Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which accounts for about 10 percent of the state’s 12 million registered voters, said final results would not be available until Wednesday afternoon.

Until then, it may not be totally clear whether Obama won the state, which he carried in 2008.

At one church in Miami hundreds of voters were still in line when polls were due to close at 7 p.m.

“I believe that Obama is doing a good job and he’s going to do a better job,” said Michele Adriaanse, 59, who arrived to vote at 6.30 p.m. and finally cast her ballot shortly before midnight. “If we don’t give him the chance, things will go back to how they were,” she added.

Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Penelope Townsley told reporters the delay was due to “an extremely high volume of absentee ballots” and because long lines forced some precincts to remain open hours after their official closing time.

Florida accounts for 29 of the 270 votes in the electoral college a candidate needs to win the presidency. That is more than any other swing state, and by many accounts the fourth-largest state was a must-win for Romney.

Most recent polls had given Romney an edge over the incumbent in Florida, where the economic recovery has been slower than in other states and long-term unemployment has reached record highs.

But registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Florida by about 5 percentage points and Romney faced multiple headwinds in the state.

A plan by Romney’s vice presidential running mate, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, to change the Medicare health insurance program for seniors was among the factors often cited as holding back Romney’s campaign in the retiree-heavy state.

He also suffered from an inability to make inroads among Hispanic voters, outside of the state’s conservative Cuban-American community.

Florida propelled former President George W. Bush to a wafer-thin victory in 2000 when he won the state by 537 votes.

SLOW-GOING

Complaints about voting procedures, long lines to cast ballots, restrictions on early voting and some possible irregularities have been heard repeatedly across Florida. There have been no claims of anything widespread or problematic enough to cast doubt on the credibility of the Florida outcome.

It also was not immediately whether U.S. Representative Allen West – the firebrand Republican lawmaker known for his blistering attacks on Obama and other Democrats – had won one of the country’s most closely watched congressional races.

West, a darling of the conservative Tea Party movement, had amassed one of the largest campaign war chests among House Republicans. His known supporters included organizations like Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political advocacy group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

But he faced a tough re-election challenge against Democrat Patrick Murphy, who had hammered the first-term Republican for the intransigence that led to gridlock in Washington.

Early Wednesday morning, West, 51, was trailing by 2,000 votes out of the 318,000 ballots cast.

Murphy, a 29-year-old businessman and political newcomer, had strong backing from party headquarters and was one of the best-funded Democratic challengers in the country.

A certified public accountant whose father runs a construction company in Miami, Murphy turned the race into a referendum on West, calling the Republican an extremist member of a “do-nothing” Congress.

The battle in Florida’s new 18th district was seen as a test of whether a high-profile – some say polarizing – conservative could win one of the biggest swing districts in a perennial swing state.

(Reporting by Tom Brown; Additional reporting by David Adams; Editing by Paul Simao)

AMMAN: US Secretary of State John Kerry flew in to Israel on Thursday as he kept up a push to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to peace negotiations amid a growing skepticism over his efforts.

Making his fourth trip to Israel since he began his tenure in February, Kerry was to head straight into talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before traveling to Ramallah to meet Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.

The meetings come after a long day of diplomacy in Jordan, during which he met with 10 other foreign ministers from the “Friends of Syria” group in a bid to try to end the Syrian conflict.

Kerry has been back and forth to the region to push for the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

But despite public declarations of support for his efforts, frustrations have been welling up from both sides.

“Kerry has a lot of good intentions and a real sense of mission” but in practice “looks like a naive and ham-handed diplomat who has been acting like a bull in the china shop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” a columnist wrote last week in the Israeli daily Haaretz.

And in an interview with Palestinian press, Hanan Ashrawi, Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member, said she saw “no readiness” on the Israeli part for a resumption of talks.

“We are waiting for a clear American position and a clear Israeli commitment in the peace process requirements,” she said.

Kerry, however, seems committed to his push, and after whirlwind talks Thursday and Friday, will return to the region on Monday to attend the World Economic Forum in Amman.

He has been seeking to put together a plan for the economic revival of the West Bank and it is possible he could unveil his ideas at the forum.

NEW YORK – Eight fuel-carrying tankers are anchored offshore in the New York Harbor with traffic restrictions still in place after super storm Sandy pummeled the port and clogged it with debris, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Sunday.

Four of the tankers were carrying petroleum products and the other four had crude oil onboard, according to the Coast Guard.

Some of the tankers are transferring fuel to light barges that can easily enter the port and deliver supplies to working terminals.

On Friday, Rear Admiral Daniel Abel, commander of First Coast Guard District, said 2 million barrels of fuel were being offloaded in the port.

The New York Harbor is open to all tug and barge traffic without restrictions. Vessels can also transit throughout except via the Arthur Kill waterway, where a cleanup is in progress after diesel leaked from a nearby terminal.

Deep draft vessels can only anchor in the port if they can find a safe home in one of the terminals that dot the harbor, the Coast Guard said.

ASBURY PARK, New Jersey – Asbury Park and Bay Head are two towns on opposite ends of the Jersey Shore’s socio-economic spectrum – one with many poor people, the other with professionals in lucrative Wall Street careers. Superstorm Sandy has swept away many of the differences between the two.

Asbury Park is a faded dowager seaside resort, still struggling to recover from the race riots in the summer of 1970, white flight, a weakened tax base and, more recently, the great recession. Some storefronts facing the ocean were boarded up as Sandy closed in on the town. Other buildings were boarded up long ago.

Ten miles away, Bay Head is a much smaller community where financiers and hedge fund managers own multimillion-dollar vacation homes and make a 70-mile commute to Wall Street. A Hollywood studio chief with a Bay Head home captivated his neighbors for many summers with a party attended by celebrities such as Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey and Alex Trebek.

Sandy’s destructive winds and epic ocean surge lashed New Jersey indiscriminately, killing 24 people and ripping up shorelines and close-in neighborhoods in hundreds of towns. Neither wealth nor social station protected anyone.

After Sandy, the famed boardwalk in Asbury Park serenaded by favorite son Bruce Springsteen needs major repairs. Its restaurants and arcades – doing well these past few years during a nascent revival – are shut indefinitely.

In Bay Head, many stately Victorian homes overlooking the beach were so smashed that dozens are condemned and cannot be reoccupied. Some just disappeared.

After the storm has come a silver lining. Like residents all over the state, people in Bay Head and Asbury Park were concerned mostly for one another.

“The storm has brought out the goodwill in everyone, an appreciation of the community,” said Ed Johnson, mayor of Asbury Park, which has 16,000 residents. “We’re all working together.”

Alberta Smith, 61, who lives in Asbury Park on Medicaid and food stamps, said she was overjoyed on Saturday to get a hot meal a second day in a row, served at a community center in Asbury Park and prepared by an interfaith organization.

Friday’s meat loaf “melted in your mouth,” she said. The chicken vegetable medley and mashed potatoes served on Saturday were good, too.

Smith appreciated the meals because she had to throw out the perishable food in her refrigerator that spoiled when power failed. Her canned goods, she said, went only so far.

HELPING FAMILY MEMBERS

When Sandy knocked out power, Smith knew her aunt Thelma Wilson would be in trouble because the oxygen machine she uses would not work.

“I went to her house to keep her calm – been sitting with her everyday,” Smith said as she placed a second hot meal in a bag to take to her aunt.

The Reverend Kevin Nunn, a pastor with the interfaith group, went from table to table handing out new socks. He gave Smith two pairs.

“The pastor’s a fine man and this is a fine town,” she said.

Ten miles south in Bay Head, a four-block-wide community of about 900 year-round residents between the Atlantic and Barnegat Bay, there was so much sand covering the town that several people said it looked like a moonscape.

Since Tuesday, dozens of small front-end loaders were busy scraping sand from the streets and piling it into 5-foot-high mounds.

Several blocks west of the ocean on Osborne Street, a front yard was covered by 4 feet of sand. A tall fence ringed the yard and airborne sand had evidently been trapped by it in the same way snowdrifts are formed.

In Bay Head, as in Asbury Park, ruined carpets, appliances like washing machines and water heaters, clothing and other household belongings were piled high on the sidewalk outside dozens of homes.

Brothers Chris and Mark Watson were walking along Bay Head’s Main Street on Saturday to view a once-in-a-lifetime scene. They had time on their hands – National Guard troops had stopped them at a checkpoint, preventing them from inspecting their family home in Mantoloking, another well-to-do town to the south.

Too much flooding ahead, they were told. They would have to wait several more days.

During the storm, a fire fueled by natural gas and whipped by Sandy had destroyed million-dollar homes in Mantoloking. The wreckage saddened the Watsons.

“These homes have been in families for generations,” Chris Watson said. “I feel sorry for the owners. Everyone feels just so vulnerable.”

But what is physically destroyed can be rebuilt. It is the people that matter, Mark Watson said.

“Our prayers are with everyone facing a redefinition of their lives,” he said.

At the intersection of North Street and East Avenue, the first block off the beach in Bay Head, three of four houses were either destroyed or seemed on the verge of collapse. One house teetered on its piles and another, with half its foundation gone, tilted severely. Gravity, it seemed, would eventually win out.

A six-bedroom home owned by the Green family had a quarter of its first floor blown away and state officials had placed an orange sticker on it, saying it could not be reoccupied until it was repaired and determined to be structurally sound.

DIGGING OUT A SPECIAL BOAT

James Green, 22, a currency risk specialist with the global bank HSBC, stood outside the home on Saturday, confident that the house would survive Sandy as it had two centuries of storms.

“Our house is the oldest in Bay Head,” he said. “It was built in Point Pleasant in the late 18th century and used at one time as a morgue for shipwrecks. It knows bad weather. A previous owner moved it here in 1893. It has seen a lot of storms and is going to outlast this one.”

When Green’s mother had first returned to the house after the storm, it saddened her when she saw the bow of a small sailboat he had built in high school sticking from the sand in the back yard. She thought the boat was in pieces all around the place.

But James Green enlisted the help of five people, who dug around the bow and found the boat was intact in several feet of sand.

“I couldn’t have dug it out alone,” he said.

The boat, which he sailed in local regattas, will be handed down to his children when he has a family – just like he will someday inherit the house on East Avenue and pass it on to the next generation of Greens, he said.

SINGAPORE: The parents of a United States scientist found hanged in Singapore last year said on Thursday that they will seek a US congressional inquiry and tap a celebrity Thai pathologist to prove their son was murdered.

Mary Todd, mother of the late researcher Shane Todd whose death in June 2012 was ruled a suicide by the Singapore police, indicated the family did not expect the US government to intervene because of its interests in Asia.

“We don’t know, we don’t know what the US government will do,” she said in an interview at Singapore’s Changi Airport before she, her husband Rick and two sons boarded a flight back to the United States.

“We’ve got so much evidence backing up what we have claimed that our son was involved with,” she said, adding that the US government “is very tentative because of their relationship with Singa-pore and China.

“I think they’d rather have us go away. But we’re not going away.”

Asked if the campaign will include pressing for a US congressional investigation, she said “yes”.

The family says that before he died, Shane Todd feared he was being made to compromise US national security in a secret project involving a Singapore institute and a Chinese telecom firm accused of international espionage.

The Todds stormed out of a Singapore coroner’s inquest on Tuesday, saying they had lost faith in the process, after a succession of witnesses gave evidence that he hanged himself in his apartment.

Their case was further undermined on Wednesday when two senior US medical examiners backed Singa-pore’s suicide report and rejected a murder scenario put forward by another American pathologist who had been engaged by the Todds.

We hear and read a great deal about the promises – and potential pitfalls – of BIM in the context of its use as a tool for sustainable design. Accordingly, we were interested to read in the most recent issue of Dwell about the Suburban Prototype Home in Bergen County. Designed by Hoboken-based Nastasi Architects for clients in the New York City suburb of Woodcliff Lake, the designers used a BIM model to successfully execute the curves and angles of a steel and glass addition to a traditional suburban ranch residence. Essentially, BIM is colloquial for advanced computer modeling design programs that allow designers to create 3-D models of a project that are loaded with extremely detailed information, at a level of precision that reduces construction time and waste and assists in the type of integrated design necessary for a truly sustainable project.

For the Suburban Prototype, Nastasi was able to transmit electronic drawings to its detailer and fabricator that set forth both geometric dimensions for the project and details on the strength of materials. The firm was also able to build a model of the property’s energy consumption by loading data on the angle of the sun, prevailing wind speeds, and average temperatures for the exact coordinates of the project site. The drawings sent to the fabricator were extremely precise, allowing it to manufacture the addition’s structural elements at comparable cost to conventional construction. John Nastasi told Dwell that he hopes to install similar types of additions on hundreds of homes, calling BIM modeling “more flexible and adaptable than other prefab methods that rely on mass-produced components and materials that are put together the same way over and over again.”

The premise of BIM – a 3-D design model that can be transmitted from architect, to client, to fabricator – offers sustainable designers an unprecedented level of control over their projects. For example, it’s possible for a BIM model to instantaneously calculate the costs of substituting different types of materials into and out of the project, while programs like ECOTECT offer extensive energy modeling capabilities, from solar analysis and shading design to ventilation and air flow analysis, determined based on local geographic and meteorological information. Nastasi’s fusion of BIM with prefab at the Suburban Prototype demonstrates the potential power that designers can harness from technology in order to drastically increase the sustainable quotient of their projects.

RIVERSIDE, California – A psychologist testifying in the murder trial of a California boy who at age 10 killed his neo-Nazi father told a court on Monday that the young defendant suffered mental issues from a “long history” of physical, emotional and likely sexual abuse.

Robert Geffner was called to the witness stand by defense attorneys who concede that Joseph Hall, now 12, shot his father at point blank range in May 2011 but argue that he should not be held criminally responsible.

“It’s clear that violence is the appropriate way in his world,” Geffner said. “A repeated theme in conversations with him was killing. Another part of his focus was guns.”

The case in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, has drawn attention for the slain father Jeffrey Hall’s neo-Nazi associations and the rarity of a parent being slain by a child as young as Joseph.

Kathleen Heide, a criminologist who specializes in juvenile offenders, has said that 8,000 murder victims over the past 32 years were slain by their offspring, but only 16 of those were committed by defendants age 10 or younger.

Since Hall is a juvenile, the purpose of the trial, now in its second week in Riverside County Superior Court, is not to determine guilt or innocence but whether certain allegations about the boy’s motives are true. If he is found responsible for the crime, he could be sent to a juvenile facility until he is 23.

The outcome of the case, which is being heard without a jury, hinges in large part on the boy’s understanding of right and wrong at the time. He may testify as early as this week.

Geffner, a psychologist and president of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute in San Diego, told the court that Hall suffered a “long history of abuse – physical, emotional and likely sexual” that led to Child Protective Services being summoned to his home 23 times by the time he was 10.

Geffner said that such abuse, which may have included being whipped or forced to eat from the floor, can create “significant neurological and physiological problems” as well as confusing the difference between right and wrong in the child’s mind.

“Children experience what’s called learned helplessness, that there’s nothing that can be done. They suffer internal feelings of hopelessness, helplessness,” he said. “There’s an unwritten message that there doesn’t seem to be any consequences to these types of behaviors.”

On cross-examination, prosecutors sought to attack Geffner’s credibility, establishing that he was expected to be paid $30,000 for his work on the case.

In a videotaped police interview played in court last week, Hall was seen to say that he was physically abused at home and committed the shooting because he “wanted everything to stop.”

Defense lawyers have said the boy was conditioned by his father’s violent, racist behavior, and killed the 32-year-old man to put a halt to the physical abuse inflicted on him.

Prosecutors say Hall, who lived in a house with four siblings, committed the slaying because his father was threatening at the time to divorce his stepmother, Krista McCary. Prosecutors said he was close to McCary and considered her his true mother.

WASHINGTON – The Congress fell to new depths of public disapproval in the past two years, yet no big shake-up of the Senate or House of Representatives is expected in Tuesday’s general election.

With days remaining before the vote, Democrats were expected to fend off what is seen as a fading Republican challenge for control of the Senate, with a 50-50 tie also a possibility.

The most likely victor is the status quo, with neither Democrats nor Republicans on track to win the super-majority necessary to quickly advance legislation, leaving each party capable of blocking almost anything they please.

Coupled with a House of Representatives that is expected to stay in Republican hands, the Congress to be sworn in next January to grapple with daunting budget and tax controversies may look an awful lot like the current, deeply divided legislature.

Whether it has any more success carrying out its basic responsibilities is an open question. Scholars of Congress generally regard the current version as one of least productive – and most destructive – in modern history.

It has failed to complete its most fundamental task of appropriating money to run the government, except on a temporary basis. The showdown in 2011 over the debt ceiling between Republicans and Democrats resulted in a downgrading of the U.S. government’s creditworthiness.

In return, the public has disapproved of Congress at record levels, with the lowest rating of 10 percent coming in August, according to a Gallup poll.

Democrats have held the majority in the Senate since 2007.

For months, Democrats expressed confidence that they could maintain their 53-47 edge in Tuesday’s elections, when one-third of the chamber’s 100 seats will be in play.

Their optimism was bolstered by what many perceived as Republican missteps this year: Romney’s poor early performance at the top of the Republican ticket coupled with the perception that some candidates, such as Tea Party activist Richard Mourdock in Indiana, could be too conservative for their states.

Mourdock now trails his Democratic challenger by 11 points, according to a new Howey-DePauw poll, offering a strong hint that Republicans will lose a seat that was first won in 1976 by one of their few remaining moderates, Senator Richard Lugar.

Some Republican candidates may have turned off voters with inflammatory comments on the campaign trail. Todd Akin’s late summer musings on “legitimate rape” complicated what was considered to be his clear shot at unseating Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri.

In addition, Republicans suffered a blow when Olympia Snowe, the popular moderate from Maine, decided to retire, opening a path for the state’s former governor, Angus King, to run as an independent who likely would align himself with Democrats if elected.

The non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report predicts that Republicans will have a net gain of no more than three seats, one short of the number needed to ensure control.

Rothenberg sees three Senate races as real toss-ups: Montana, Virginia and Wisconsin, all of which are currently held by Democrats.

Plenty of other races are too close to call, including Massachusetts, where Democrat Elizabeth Warren has been gaining momentum against Republican incumbent Scott Brown.

THE DEEP DIVIDE

Still, with the presidential race and many of the 33 Senate races tightening up, Republicans in the final days of the campaigns have become more encouraged about their prospects of taking over the chamber.

One Senate Republican leadership aide pointed to narrowing presidential and Senate races in Pennsylvania as giving hope for a Republican takeover of the chamber.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, was less convinced. “A 50-50 Senate is certainly possible,” he said, adding that Democrats “have a decent shot at 52 or even 53″ seats.

That would be a reversal of last year’s conventional wisdom. Throughout 2011, political junkies looked at the sluggish U.S. economy under Obama, did some simple math and concluded that in 2013, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell would finally win his quest to hold the “majority leader” title.

The simple math is that in this election, Democrats are defending 21 seats, plus two more that are now controlled by independents who generally side with them.

Republicans, with just 10 seats to defend, have more opportunities to pick up seats and fewer chances to lose them.

“On the whole, Democrats have done much better than they looked likely to do a year ago,” Sabato said. “This election could have been a disaster for Senate Democrats, but it doesn’t look to be now.”

If Tuesday’s voting produces a 50-50 Senate, it would be just the third election in history to do so.

In this situation, control of the Senate would go to the party that wins the White House – either Obama’s Democrats, or Romney’s Republicans because the U.S. vice president serves as the president of the Senate, a titular position but one with the power to break tie votes.

Neither will approach the magical number of 60 seats needed to really dictate the agenda. A “super majority” of 60 is required under Senate rules to overcome procedural obstacles available to the minority party.

As a result, the two parties will have to either resign themselves to more gridlock or find a way to thread the needle on controversial legislation next year to cut federal budget deficits that have topped $1 trillion in each of the last four years and to reform an outdated tax code.

TEA PARTY FATES

The 2010 congressional elections were historic for the huge gains Republicans made in the House, where they went from being in the minority to now holding a 240-190 edge over Democrats, with five vacancies currently.

Much of their success was thanks to the birth of the small-government Tea Party movement that was embraced by the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

For 2012, the Tea Party could suffer a setback in the House, while potentially gaining some strength in the Senate.

Some of the Tea Party’s biggest names – Michelle Bachmann in Minnesota, Steve King in Iowa and Allen West in Florida to name a few – are locked in tough races against Democrats.

If enough of them lose, all eyes will be on House Speaker John Boehner to see if he is more conciliatory toward Democrats, especially on their call for raising taxes on the rich. Boehner’s overall House majority is seen shrinking minimally, however – maybe by fewer than 10 seats.

As Romney’s standing in opinion polls has improved, “We’ve certainly seen a bounce (for House Republican candidates) in a number of swing states where the presidential race is being decided,” said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In the Senate, the handful of Tea Party activists could gain strength if Texas Republican Ted Cruz wins over Democrat Paul Sadler, as expected. If Mourdock’s fortunes reversed and he won in Indiana, he would add Tea Party firepower to the Senate.

But, like Akin in Missouri, Mourdock’s chances may have been hurt by a debate comment in which he said that even life that begins with rape may be “something God intended to happen.”

A surprise Senate Republican takeover would produce a more conservative chamber – one somewhat more in line philosophically with the Republican House.

In an election year that has seen plenty of drama, the final days of the Senate campaigns could bring surprises.

STOCKHOLM: At least nine cars were torched and two schools and a police station were set ablaze as riots swept through Stockholm’s immigrant-dominated suburbs early Friday for the fifth straight night, police and firefighters said.

The riots, which have shattered Sweden’s image abroad as a peaceful and egalitarian nation, have sparked a debate about the assimilation of immigrants, who make up about 15 percent of the population.

Many of the immigrants who have arrived due to the country’s generous refugee policy struggle to learn the language and find employment, despite numerous government programs.

Early Friday, police told Swedish news agency TT that eight people had been arrested so far for the night’s rioting, but no injuries were reported.

In Rinkeby, one of the city’s immigrant-dominated areas, firefighters rushed to put out flames that engulfed six cars parked alongside each other. Five cars were totally gutted, and one sustained more moderate damage, according to an Agence France-Presse photographer on the scene.

Three more cars were torched in the Norsborg suburb, and a police station in Aelvsjoe was set on fire but quickly extinguished, police said.

Firefighters, meanwhile, said a school in another immigrant-heavy suburb, Tensta, was set ablaze but quickly extinguished, and a nursery school in the Kista suburb was also on fire.

And police in Soedertaelje, a town south of Stockholm, said rioters threw stones at them as they responded to reports of cars set alight.

The previous night, the fire brigade had been called to some 90 different blazes, most of them caused by rioters.

A delayed proclamation of the winning party-list groups could result in fraud, the Makabayan coalition in the House of Representatives grouping seven party-list House members warned Thursday.

Reelectionist Rep. Neri Colme­nares of Bayan Muna and outgoing Rep. Rafael Mariano of Anak-pawis expressed such sentiments a day after the Commission on Elections Commissioner Grace Padaca announced the top 25 vote-getters in the party-list race.

Makabayan includes Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and Kabataan. Of the top 25, only Bayan Muna, Gabriela and ACT have made it.

“Comelec proclaimed the first six senators with only 72 COCs received, amid questions of legality. Why isn’t Comelec pushing for the proclamation of winning party-list groups? The delay only raises the possibility of fraud by losing party-list groups,” Colmenares, the Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, pointed out.

COC is the Certificate of Canvass.

Colmenares cited that there is no reason to suspend the proclamation, considering that per the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), votes from un­trans­mitted COCs are very minimal of the total party-list votes and will not affect the current standing of most of the winning party-list groups.

Back in the 2010 elections, the NBOC has proclaimed 61 percent of the total seat allocation for the party-list system pending the results of the overseas absentee voting.

Under the party-list law, a party-list group should earn at least two percent of the votes cast for party-list candidates to gain at least one seat in the House of Representatives.

The number of seats for each party-list group will depend on the number votes they get.

With more than 110 COCs canvassed and more than 28,292,869 party-list votes counted, it is time for the NBOC to proclaim the clear winners in the party-list race,” Colmenares added.

Mariano, for his part, noted that Comelec should adhere to the provision of the Automated Election System Law which endeavors to determine the will of the people in an expeditious manner.

Party-list groups fear fraud

By Llanesca T. Panti Reporter

A delayed proclamation of the winning party-list groups could result in fraud, the Makabayan coalition in the House of Representatives grouping seven party-list House members warned Thursday.

Reelectionist Rep. Neri Colme­nares of Bayan Muna and outgoing Rep. Rafael Mariano of Anak-pawis expressed such sentiments a day after the Commission on Elections Commissioner Grace Padaca announced the top 25 vote-getters in the party-list race.

Makabayan includes Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and Kabataan. Of the top 25, only Bayan Muna, Gabriela and ACT have made it.

“Comelec proclaimed the first six senators with only 72 COCs received, amid questions of legality. Why isn’t Comelec pushing for the proclamation of winning party-list groups? The delay only raises the possibility of fraud by losing party-list groups,” Colmenares, the Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, pointed out.

COC is the Certificate of Canvass.

Colmenares cited that there is no reason to suspend the proclamation, considering that per the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), votes from un­trans­mitted COCs are very minimal of the total party-list votes and will not affect the current standing of most of the winning party-list groups.

Back in the 2010 elections, the NBOC has proclaimed 61 percent of the total seat allocation for the party-list system pending the results of the overseas absentee voting.

Under the party-list law, a party-list group should earn at least two percent of the votes cast for party-list candidates to gain at least one seat in the House of Representatives.

The number of seats for each party-list group will depend on the number votes they get.

“With more than 110 COCs canvassed and more than 28,292,869 party-list votes counted, it is time for the NBOC to proclaim the clear winners in the party-list race,” Colmenares added.

Mariano, for his part, noted that Comelec should adhere to the provision of the Automated Election System Law which endeavors to determine the will of the people in an expeditious manner.

NEW YORK – More fuel terminals came back online in the New York harbor network on Sunday as mainline power was restored nearly a week after super storm Sandy, but gasoline shortages persisted and some major facilities remained idle.

A looming concern was that heating oil supplies were dwindling with temperatures expected to dip to freezing in New York on Monday.

Commercial power was restored at Colonial Pipeline’s key terminal in Linden, New Jersey, a major supply hub for New York and northern New Jersey. Colonial said all delivery lines out of the Linden terminal were “operable”.

In the New York Harbor, some of the four tankers carrying refined fuels and anchored offshore were transferring shipments to smaller barges for delivery, despite some traffic restrictions, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

One of the tankers, Glory Express, became the first allowed into the Arthur Kill Waterway after Sandy struck. It was headed to Kinder Morgan’s Carteret terminal in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon, Reuters shipping data showed.

Late on Saturday, Hess Corp. said power was partly restored at its 70,000 barrel per day (bpd) Port Reading, New Jersey, refinery, but it needs full power to complete a damage assessment. Hess said it could take several days before it could bring back utility systems necessary to consider restarting.

The Phillips 66-owned Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey was idle over the weekend after the company was forced to shut 238,000 bpd plant when the storm hit. Phillips 66 said it does not expect updates on operations until Monday morning.

The outages hit the region when gasoline and diesel stocks were hovering near all-time lows. Total East Coast gasoline inventories hit a record low for October in the first week of the month and barely recovered in the weeks since, according to U.S. Energy Department data. Similarly, East Coast distillate stocks hit a seven-year low three weeks ago and were at their 12th lowest level right before Sandy devastated the Eastern Seaboard.

In a briefing on Sunday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said the fuel shortage is lifting in New York but problems are likely to persist for “a number of days.”

In New York, 27 percent of gas stations surveyed by the Energy Department’s data arm were without gasoline on Sunday, down from 38 percent on Saturday.

For FACTBOX on refinery, terminal and pipeline operations:

By Sunday afternoon, 1.86 million homes and business were without power in states hit by the storm. Power was restored to nearly 78 percent of customers that were without electricity after Sandy.

New Jersey power provider PSE&G said it brought power back to 78 percent of gasoline stations in its service area,

“We have restored power to all of the refineries and pipeline suppliers that we are aware of,” PSE&G President Ralph LaRossa said on a conference call.

However, there were still signs of the shortages that have gripped the region, causing miles-long lines for gasoline.

Fuel rationing based on license plate numbers in New Jersey, which was enacted by Governor Chris Christie, entered its second day. Only cars with even numbers could buy gasoline in the state on Sunday.

In Montclair, New Jersey, some stations ran out of fuel after pumping gasoline on Saturday for cars with odd-numbered plates. This left few stations with gasoline to serve motorists with even-numbered plates , who waited for hours on Sunday.

On the heating oil front, suppliers were optimistic there would soon be enough supplies, barring any transportation issues in the next few days.

Two terminals with heating oil supplies – one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn — were open for business Sunday and some barges were expected to deliver heating oil to terminals operated by Bayside Fuel Oil Depot terminals in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

“If all goes smoothly … we’ll have enough for this week and into the next weekend,” said John Maniscalco, head of New York Oil Heating Association.

London: British counter-terrorism police were on Thursday investigating the murder of a man thought to be a soldier, who was butchered and beheaded on a busy London street by two men shouting Islamist slogans.

The attackers, wielding knives including a meat cleaver, carried out the attack a few hundred meters from the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London, then delivered an Islamist tirade to passers-by.

Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the “appalling crime”, adding: “There are strong indications that it is a terrorist incident.”

He cut short a visit to Paris to fly back for a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee, COBRA, which had already met in the hours following the attack.

Media reports citing witnesses said the men first ran over their victim in a car before finishing him off with the knives.

Eyewitnesses described how after the two men carried out their attack, they stayed at the scene, asking passers-by to photograph and film them.

Armed police shot and wounded the two attackers after they ran at officers, said witnesses. Both were being treated in hospital, said police.

Amateur footage of one of the men carrying a blood-stained knife and meat cleaver shows him saying: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

The man, a black man dressed in a hooded jacket and black woolly hat, speaks in a London accent.

“We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” he says.

“I apologize that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

Reports said the man attacked was wearing a t-shirt bearing the logo of the British military charity Help for Heroes.

Several eyewitnesses said he had been decapitated.

Rapper Boya Dee, who witnessed the incident, wrote on his Twitter account: “Ohhhhh myyyy God!!!! I just see a man with his head chopped off right in front of my eyes!”

War in London

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, 48, told the Daily Telegraph that when she asked the assailants why they had carried out the attack, one of them told her: “We want to start a war in London tonight.”

Cameron, speaking to journalists before flying back from Paris, called the attack “truly shocking.”

Speaking at a joint news conference with French President Francois Hollande, he added:

We’ve had this sort of attack before in our country and we never buckle in the face of them.

“People across Britain, people in every community, I believe, will utterly condemn this attack.”

Hollande, expressed solidarity with Britain, at “the cowardly killing of a British soldier”, but the British Prime Minister did not publicly confirm that the victim was a soldier. AFP

The Muslim Council of Britain said the killers’ use of “Islamic slogans” indicated they were motivated by their faith.

A statement from the council said: “This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family.”

Police were called at 2:20 p.m. (1320 GMT) to reports of one man being assaulted by two others.

Britain’s top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe confirmed two men had been arrested following the “shocking and horrific” attack.

“We have launched a murder investigation, being led by the Counter Terrorism Command,” he added.

Police had met local community representatives and extra officers were patrolling the area, he said. Appealing for calm, he added: “The shock that we all feel at what has happened must bind us together.”

The United States condemned the attack.

“We stand with our UK allies in the face of such senseless violence,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.

BOSTON – The chief pharmacist at the company linked to the deadly meningitis outbreak has received a subpoena to appear before a congressional committee after he declined to appear voluntarily.

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee issued the subpoena to Barry Cadden, co-owner of the Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center and its chief pharmacist before the compounding pharmacy surrendered its license in the wake of the outbreak.

“With more than 400 people infected and 30 deaths, it is critical that we hear directly from the head of the facility linked to the outbreak,” said Committee Chairman Fred Upton and Ranking Member Henry Waxman in a statement. “Since Mr. Cadden has indicated he will not appear voluntarily, we are left with no choice but to issue a subpoena.”

James Coffey, Director of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, which regulates pharmacists in Massachusetts, has also been invited to testify at a hearing scheduled for November 14.

A spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a question as to whether Coffey had agreed to attend.

Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is scheduled to testify.

Hamburg, Cadden and others, including officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have also been invited to testify about the outbreak before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee at a separate hearing scheduled for November 15.

Meanwhile, NECC’s legal team has been busy in federal court defending the company against a mounting number of lawsuits.

NECC lawyers, for example, say NECC did nothing wrong and have been caught in a crossfire of conflicting federal and state laws concerning specialty pharmacies.

In addition, NECC lawyers argue various states have themselves enacted differing and in some cases conflicting regulations on the practice of pharmacies.

“Permitted practices in some states may be arguably impermissible manufacturing by FDA and other states,” NECC lawyers said Monday in documents filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

But Peter McGrath said NECC and its attorneys are just buying time to plan how to contend with looming lawsuits and investigations.

Last month, McGrath, a former federal prosecutor, filed suit in state court in Massachusetts seeking to freeze the assets of NECC and its owners, including Cadden. His attachment, filed on behalf of an unnamed New Hampshire man, seeks several million dollars.

NECC wants that case moved to U.S. District Court because of the federal questions involved over what makes a drug manufacturer.

NECC said it expects a Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to rule within the next two to four months on whether to consolidate a number of lawsuits in one court. The decision could come soon after a hearing is held January 31 in Orlando, Florida.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke and Tim McLaughlin in Boston, and by David Morgan in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio)

NEW YORK – The American Red Cross said on Sunday it regrets not responding sooner to areas on the U.S. East Coast hardest hit by superstorm Sandy and is working aggressively to distribute food, water and other supplies to victims across New York and New Jersey.

The privately funded organization blamed flooding and other infrastructure problems for its slow response to the storm, which has killed more than 110 people and caused billions in property damage.

The delay in relief response from the Red Cross has been widely criticized by politicians. James Molinaro, president of Staten Island, a New York City borough roughly a 25-minute ferry ride from Lower Manhattan, went so far as to ask residents not to donate to the Red Cross.

“Do we wish we could have been there sooner? You bet,” said Roger Lowe, a spokesman for the American Red Cross.

“When you have 8 million people in need, with roads that are damaged, infrastructure broken down, flooding everywhere, we can’t be there that fast. And we feel bad about that.”

Lowe said that a Red Cross vehicle was on the way to Staten Island last Thursday when Molinaro blasted the group.

The Red Cross is working aggressively to ramp up services for victims and has served more than 481,000 meals and snacks, Lowe said.

About 60 trailers filled with rakes, shovels, personal hygiene items and other relief supplies will arrive in the region this weekend. The Red Cross is also planning to distribute 80,000 blankets before more cold weather is expected later this week, Lowe said.

Most supplies were stored ahead of Sandy in five staging areas just out of Sandy’s reach. Getting it to the hardest hit areas, many located along the waterfront, proved difficult in the days after Sandy, Lowe said.

“You don’t want to put your relief workers or your relief supplies in these areas that are about to be hit by the hurricane,” he said.

The Red Cross is not aware of any infrastructure problems now hampering relief work, he said.

All of the group’s 320 emergency response vehicles across the United States are now at Sandy recovery sites distributing food and water, or are on their way. Eight large kitchens in New York and New Jersey are making meals that the emergency vehicles pick up and distribute to victims, Lowe said.

Yet on social media sites, some victims complained that the Red Cross still hasn’t reached them.

In Breezy Point, a neighborhood in the New York borough of Queens where a fire burned more than 100 houses, several residents have claimed on Twitter that the Red Cross hasn’t visited yet.

It was a claim that Lowe flatly denied.

“I know we’re in Breezy Point,” he said. “We’re working to get to more and more neighborhoods every day, and as we hear of places. We’re where think we need to be.”

DETROIT – A former General Motors Co engineer and her husband, charged with conspiring to steal the automaker’s trade secrets, were seen throwing out bags of shredded documents in a shopping plaza in 2006, FBI agents said on Tuesday.

Shanshan Du, 53, the former GM employee, and her husband, Yu Qin, 51, were charged in 2010 in a seven-count indictment with trying to steal GM trade secrets related to hybrid vehicles to pass on to China’s Chery Automobile Co. The trial in U.S. District Court in Detroit began on Monday.

Several FBI agents described in court on Tuesday how they watched the defendants in May 2006 driving to a shopping plaza in Troy, Michigan, to throw away the bags of shredded documents. The agents also described seizing several computers, files and detachable hard drives from the couple’s Troy home office.

Frank Eaman, Qin’s lawyer, said the documents in question were not trade secrets.

Qin and Du, who worked as a GM engineer, are accused of taking confidential GM information on hybrid technology and trying to pass it to Chinese automakers through a small firm they owned called Millennium Technology International, according to court documents.

Du is accused of copying thousands of GM documents to an external hard drive five days after the automaker offered her a severance agreement in January 2005.

She left GM’s advanced technology group in March 2005. In August, Qin and Du proposed a joint venture on hybrids to China’s Chery in a series of emails, according to court documents.

Then in November 2005, Qin, who had been working as an electrical engineer in Troy, applied for jobs as a hybrid engineer, claiming on his resume that he had invented some of the stolen GM technology, according to court documents.

The couple were required to surrender their U.S. passports and cannot leave the Detroit area without court permission.

Each defendant faces a count of conspiracy to possess trade secrets without authorization and two counts of unauthorized possession of trade secrets, as well as three counts of wire fraud. In addition, Qin faces a charge of obstruction of justice.

The trade secret counts carry a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. The wire fraud counts and an obstruction charge each carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

GM declined to comment on the ongoing case.

The case is In re: U.S. v. Qin, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, No. 10-cr-20454.

Cost savings from reduced engine maintenance engine may equal or slightly outweigh the higher cost of biodiesel, which has been lowered by subsidization.

This blog repeatedly has extolled the virtue of San Francisco, when it comes to electric vehicles; usage is approaching 50% of transit provided by San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Philadelphian Treehugger John Laumer reports on another major green milestone for San Francisco.

Earlier this week when Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that the city had converted its fleet of approximately 1,500 diesel vehicles to run on biodiesel – a month earlier than the goal it had set in 2006. Fire engines, ambulances and MUNI buses, amongst others, will now run on B20, a blend of 20% biofuel and 80% diesel fuel. The city estimates the conversion will have the effect of displacing the equivalent of 1.2m gallons of diesel fuels every year.

The experience of fleet managers with biodiesel usage issues, such as fuel filter clogging and cold weather performance, can depend upon whether they are self-blending or relying upon terminal blending. High-quality fuel, properly handled and treated, will perform in cold weather.

Because Cincinnati Metro got a sweet (crude) deal, they use B50 in months, when the average temperature is higher than 40º F (April to October), then switch to a B20 blend during the colder months. The Toronto Transit Commission is another urban transit authority that approves of biodiesel use. More recently, Autoblog Green reported1 that biodiesel is being tested in the fleet for the city of Orlando, Florida.

Managers of urban fleets also need to consider vehicle emissions. A recently published, DOE / USDA study shows overall, life cycle emissions of carbon dioxide from biodiesel to be 78 per cent lower than from petroleum diesel. Which sounds good, howsoever, please note that engines running on a biodiesel blend still require after treatment; and, some other studies have shown a slight increase in NOx emissions.

We are likely to see more discussion of the use of diesel and biodiesel in the United States as fuel prices rise and there is a greater concern over supply. Much already has been made of a recent Rand study that indicated better economic performance from modern clean diesels.

The Rand study considered consumer factors, such as fuel savings, technology costs and performance. When societal costs, such as noxious pollutants, greenhouse gas emissions and energy security costs, were considered everything shifted to a more negative result, yet diesel power remained more economically advantageous than hybrids or E85 vehicles for the three vehicle categories compared: a mid-sized car, a mid-sized SUV and a large pickup truck.

There also was a flurry of news about winning performance on biodiesel during the 2007 Challenge Bibendum in Shanghai. The Daimler press recognized3 “ever more restricted access to cities, more stringent emission limits and ever scarcer resources versus the growing demand for individual mobility”. Still, the same press release went on to exort the role of the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine). [It] “will remain the Number One automotive drive system in the years to come.” While Daimler may be the most blatant about an allegiance to diesel engine, others also were present and extolled their use of cleaner diesel engines, including Nissan-Renault, PSA Peugeot Citroen, and VW / Audi.

Promotion of biodiesel seems contrary to some warning signs. The European Commission recently revoked its position to require greater biodiesel usage. The reasons are simple and complex at the same time.

Simple from the standpoint: Would you rather have food and water, or biodiesel; and, complex since so much machinery runs on diesel and could run on biodiesel.The Big Gav4 relayed a report from the Australian that the Australian Biodiesel Group has joined Australian Renewable Fuels in mothballing a number of biodiesel plants, with high feedstock prices outweighing high oil prices. It is the second Australian producer of the fuel to reduce output in a week, amid a surge in feedstock prices.

Lester Brown favors plug-in hybrids, but these won’t haul the freight or plow the fields.

Even simpler from the standpoint that it is impossible to supplant total diesel fuel usage with biodiesel. Robert Rapier attests5:

There are approximately 4 billion arable acres in the world. There are many different feed stocks from which to make renewable diesel, but most biodiesel is made from rapeseed oil. Rapeseed is an oilseed crop that is widespread, with relatively high oil production.

Consider how much petroleum could be displaced if all 4 billion acres of arable land were planted in rapeseed, or an energy crop with an oil productivity similar to rapeseed. The average rapeseed oil yield per year is 127 gallons/acre. On 4 billion acres, this works out to be 33 million barrels per day of rapeseed oil. The energy content of rapeseed oil is about 10% less than that of petroleum diesel, so the petroleum equivalent yield from planting all of the world’s arable land in one of the more popular biofuel options is just under 30 million barrels per day. This is just over a third of the world’s present usage of petroleum, 85 million barrels per day. Yet this is the gross yield. Because it takes energy to grow, harvest, and process biomass into fuel, the net yield will be lower.

Complex from the perspective of such a wide distribution of diesel power, its greater efficiency over spark ignition, the possibility of biodiesel as a partial replacement, the advantages of biodiesel over diesel, and the variety of feedstock that can be employed.Similar Posts: Freedom Fly Car Government Red Dye Transportation Biofuels New Biodiesel Plants in US and Germany Citroen Driving on B30 Biodiesel 1Orlando Florida to test out new biodiesel fuel in city fleet 2Shaping Future Transportation Initiative (PDF) 3Daimler is the most successful participant in Shanghai Bibendum 4Record Oil Prices Can’t Make Biofuels Profitable 5The Future is Solar

MAPLEWOOD/HOBOKEN, New Jersey – Getting into New York City was expected to be a little easier for some New Jersey commuters on Wednesday with the reopening of the Holland Tunnel for the first time since it was shut after being flooded by Superstorm Sandy.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced late Tuesday that the tunnel connecting the two states under the Hudson River will reopen to all commuter traffic starting at 5 a.m. On an average weekday, an estimated 91,000 vehicles use the Holland Tunnel to commute between New York and New Jersey, Christie said on his website.

Commuter hassles tied to Sandy’s devastation of railways and river crossings eased slightly on Tuesday, with the restoration of limited rail service into New York and added buses for train riders whose lines were washed out.

Nerves remained raw, however, as travel times were stretched by traffic jams and overcrowded transit station platforms and some tunnels into New York flooded by the massive storm remained closed.

Resuming limited service for the first time since the storm, the PATH train carried about 23,000 commuters from Jersey City’s Journal Square into Manhattan during the morning rush. PATH officials had no word on when more service would resume.

Tunnels into New York City that remain closed indefinitely to suburban commuters include two of the four East Harlem River tunnels, limiting Long Island Rail Road service and one of the two Hudson River tunnels used by NJ Transit.

NJ Transit trains were jammed as a result.

“People were left on the platform,” said Josh Crandall, whose Clever Commute web service runs service disruption alerts. “People just can’t get on. And people are frustrated.”

Many NJ Transit rail riders whose lines were disabled by the storm chose to ride buses instead, and the influx in road traffic caused epic congestion in Hoboken on the only route to the Lincoln Tunnel.

“You get to Hoboken and then you are buying your way into one of the worst traffic jams you’ve ever seen,” Crandall said.

After a Monday crush of displaced rail riders boarding buses, NJ Transit ramped up the number of buses deployed on Tuesday. In South Orange, New Jersey, where one bus showed up on Monday, four showed up on Tuesday for a similar crowd of 100 people lined up by 5:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. departure.

Those riders typically use NJ Transit’s “Midtown Direct” train line, a 35-minute straight shot into New York’s Pennsylvania Station – and residents of South Orange and neighboring Maplewood pay a real estate premium for the easy train access to Manhattan.

Tempers flared as frustrated commuters turned to their suburban town mayors for help, and some felt their pleas were rebuffed.

Maplewood Mayor Victor DeLuca – a seven-time town mayor who rides Midtown Direct himself to his job in New York City – vowed to seek a travel solution because commuting is a vital part of town life.

“We have such a high level of commuters here. It’s imperative that we try to think outside the box and try to figure out something,” DeLuca said.

He arranged for town jitneys to transport commuters to neighboring Irvington, where every eight minutes they can board a NJ Transit bus that can connect them with train service into New York City’s Penn Station.

His counterpart in South Orange, Alex Torpey, a 25-year-old grad school student serving his first term in elective office, struck a different tone when town residents began asking him on Facebook how the town would help commuters get to work.

“The Village, and myself, one unpaid elected official, cannot solve every single problem you have,” wrote Torpey, the village’s youngest mayor ever.

Torpey, whose remarks drew criticism on a local message board, later said his words had been misinterpreted and that he had intended to set realistic expectations for residents. Torpey said he pressed NJ Transit to add more buses for displaced rail riders.

“We will provide help to find a solution, but we really need NJ Transit to step up,” he said Tuesday. “I think sometimes people expect us to solve every problem instantly, that we have unlimited resources. Again, this is NJ Transit’s responsibility.”

NEW YORK – The New York Harbor energy network was returning to normal on Sunday with mainline power restored nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy pummeled the eastern seaboard.

Yet damage to infrastructure near Linden, New Jersey, a major northeast fuel hub, kept a major refinery and some terminals shut, lending longer life to gasoline shortages that have persisted in the region.

Another looming concern was that heating oil supplies were dwindling with temperatures expected to dip to freezing in New York by Monday.

Commercial power was restored at Colonial Pipeline’s key terminal in Linden and the company was delivering to seven terminals connected to the facility on Sunday. NuStar Energy LP, whose Linden terminal had sustained severe damages after Sandy, said it hoped to restore pipeline and barge deliveries “very soon.”

Phillips 66′s Bayway refinery in Linden was idle over the weekend after the company was forced to shut 238,000 barrel per day plant when the storm hit. Phillips 66 said it does not expect updates on operations until Monday morning.

In the New York Harbor, some of the four tankers carrying refined fuels and anchored offshore were transferring shipments to smaller barges for delivery, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

One of the tankers, Glory Express, became the first allowed into the Arthur Kill Waterway after Sandy struck. It was headed to Kinder Morgan’s Carteret terminal in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon, Reuters shipping data showed.

Late on Saturday, Hess Corp said power was partly restored at its 70,000 bpd Port Reading, New Jersey, refinery, but it needs full power to complete a damage assessment. Hess said it could take several days before it could bring back utility systems necessary to consider restarting.

The outages hit the U.S. East Coast when gasoline and diesel stocks were hovering near all-time lows. Total East Coast gasoline inventories hit a record low for October in the first week of the month and barely recovered in the weeks since, according to U.S. Energy Department data. Similarly, East Coast distillate stocks were at a seven-year low three weeks ago.

In a briefing on Sunday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the fuel shortage is lifting in New York but problems are likely to persist for “a number of days.”

In New York, 27 percent of gasoline stations surveyed by the Energy Department’s data arm were without fuel on Sunday, down from 38 percent on Saturday. This, along with the 30,000 gallons of gasoline distributed by the New York National Guard on Saturday, brought some relief to motorists troubled by the fuel outages.

By Sunday afternoon, 1.86 million homes and businesses were without power in states hit by the storm. Power was restored to nearly 78 percent of customers that were without electricity after Sandy.

New Jersey power provider PSE&G said it brought power back to 78 percent of gasoline stations in its service area.

“We have restored power to all of the refineries and pipeline suppliers that we are aware of,” PSE&G President Ralph LaRossa said on a conference call.

However, there were still signs of the shortages that have gripped the region, causing miles-long lines for gasoline.

Fuel rationing based on license plate numbers in New Jersey, which was enacted by Governor Chris Christie, entered its second day. Only cars with even numbers could buy gasoline in the state on Sunday.

In Montclair, New Jersey, some stations ran out of fuel after pumping gasoline on Saturday for cars with odd-numbered plates. This left few stations with gasoline to serve motorists with even-numbered plates, who waited for hours on Sunday.

On the heating oil front, suppliers were optimistic there would soon be enough supplies, barring any transportation issues in the next few days.

Two terminals with heating oil supplies – one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn — were open for business on Sunday and some barges were expected to deliver heating oil to terminals operated by Bayside Fuel Oil Depot terminals in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

“If all goes smoothly … we’ll have enough for this week and into the next weekend,” said John Maniscalco, head of New York Oil Heating Association.

(Additional reporting by Ed Tobin; Editing by David Gregorio and Marguerita Choy)

Kerry back in Israel for peace push
AMMAN: US Secretary of State John Kerry flew in to Israel on Thursday as he kept up a push to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to peace negotiations amid a growing skepticism over his efforts.

Tale of two New Jersey towns now linked by Sandy
ASBURY PARK, New Jersey – Asbury Park and Bay Head are two towns on opposite ends of the Jersey Shore’s socio-economic spectrum – one with many poor people, the other with professionals in lucrative Wall Street careers. Superstorm Sandy has swept away many of the differences between the two.

Party-list groups fear fraud
A delayed proclamation of the winning party-list groups could result in fraud, the Makabayan coalition in the House of Representatives grouping seven party-list House members warned Thursday.

Nearly two-thirds NY area gasoline stations still shut: AAA
NEW YORK – Nearly two-thirds of all the service stations in New York City and New Jersey remain shut, due mostly to a lack of power following Hurricane Sandy, the AAA said on Friday in data that showed little improvement from a day ago.

SOLDIER KILLED, 14 OTHERS HURT IN MISHAP
BAMBANG, Nueva Vizcaya: An Isabela-based soldier was killed while his 14 colleagues were injured when their military truck collided with a speeding passenger bus in Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte Thursday before dawn.

Housing crisis looms as storm victims battle cold
NEW YORK – A housing crisis loomed in New York City as victims of superstorm Sandy struggled on Sunday without heat in near-freezing temperatures, and officials fretted displaced residents would not be able to vote in Tuesday’s presidential election.